


It's just bad writing

by Franzeska



Series: March Meta Matters [30]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23409739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: Originally posted: June 15, 2018.https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/174927819209/tagging-abuse-anon-im-going-to-continue-sorryUploaded for day 30 of the March Meta Matters Challenge.
Series: March Meta Matters [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664836
Kudos: 4
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	It's just bad writing

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted: June 15, 2018.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/174927819209/tagging-abuse-anon-im-going-to-continue-sorry
> 
> Uploaded for day 30 of the March Meta Matters Challenge.

**Anonymous asked: (tagging abuse anon) I'm going to continue sorry, the problem with reylos who have convinced themselves that what they are writing isn't abuse means that they won't tag it so that people who want to avoid it can I don't ship it but I have gotten harrassed by ants b4 and after that, I have been including extra warnings in the tags so that way anything that could be a trigger/squick can be avoided, but you can't do that if you have rationalized kinds of abuse as normal for the ship**

[shipping-isnt-morality](https://shipping-isnt-morality.tumblr.com/post/174809017693/tagging-abuse-anon-im-going-to-continue-sorry):

> Hhhhh. See, I kind of wish you were off anon here because talking about this topic politically is really hard, but….. yeah, basically.
> 
> It’s hard to talk critically about any kind of broad ship right now, since every post has to come with a “this doesn’t apply to all shippers and shippers aren’t bad people by nature no matter what they ship and if you harass anyone I’m solidly against you.” So, like, if this gets reblogged off my blog, that’s my position first and foremost.
> 
> THAT SAID: there are some troubling patterns that I see in a LOT of ships with villains, especially villains that people want to see have a redemption arc, where behavior that’s thoroughly abusive gets downplayed, written off, denied as abuse and goes untagged. It’s by no means just reyl0; jaspis comes to mind too, and plenty of others. The canon pairing has definite elements of abuse of power and one character trying - with varying degrees of success - to emotionally manipulate the other, and fanfic in the canon timeline which portrays that and even builds on it without acknowledging (via tagging, at least) the Unfortunate Implications at all sits…. poorly, with me.
> 
> This ties in with people saying “if you ship abuse you’re evil!” which incentivizes people coming out with any reason they can scrape up for why their ship isn’t abuse. which, of course, is the exact opposite of what we want. I know most of these arguments are born of that (and/or an intrinsic aversion to calling your OTP abusive) and not necessarily a genuine belief in the arguments, but it’s still frustrating.
> 
> Overall even if there are some troubling patterns I think shippers are infinitely more reasonable about it, and more inclined to distance themselves from the fiction and see it critically. And even among those that aren’t, it’s still much more of a symptom of poor education about abuse than a cause.

Honestly, I think a lot of Unfortunate Implications in fiction are not the result of poor education on abuse. I think they’re the result of **crappy writing skills**.

Fic is full of abusive and unhealthy relationship dynamics. My least favorite one is fandom’s favorite flavor of “fluffy” BDSM-lite fic where whoever’s on the bottom _needs_ their kink and their partner faithfully caters to them without appearing to need or get anything from the relationship. This exactly mirrors a lot of poisonous real life ideas about sexual roles. It’s where the whole “I am not a life support system for a whip” thing came from.

This is a genuine, pervasive, and often abusive element of real relationships, but it’s not one we call out much in fandom because the person on the receiving end of the emotional bullshit is the one doing the tying up. They’re usually the one doing the penetrating too, which as we all know, is fifty thousand times more important than anything else in a fanfic relationship.

What would fix those fics for me? Nuance. Psychological realism within the confines of unrealistic idfic porn logic (yes, it’s possible). No tags are going to fix it for me.

The same goes for Labyrinth fandom or anywhere else we ladies are getting our bad boy kink on. One very popular flavor of those ships is a power fantasy of taming a bad person. Sure, he tries his controlling problematic nonsense (hot!), but he’s no match for Our Heroine! Inappropriate age gaps or power differences just add to that fantasy. The tougher the obstacle, the sweeter the victory. It’s not overtly phrased like that in fic or in the billion romance novels with this plot, but it’s not subtle either. Other times, it’s more the fantasy of two messed up characters whose bad behavior and psychological problems somehow work perfectly together.

Some of those authors do squick me with their fics, but is it because they honestly don’t know they’re writing about abuse? Or is it because they’re writing fiction someone is supposed to get off to and seeing a dumbass ‘abuse’ tag kills one’s ladyboner? (I certainly don’t want to hear about how my favorite writers hate their own taste and mine by extension. That is not sexy!) Or did they try to depict the relationship more ambiguously but they **just weren’t good enough.**

I hear you on the current fandom climate. Plenty of people turn themselves into pretzels to avoid admitting that their favorite thing is less than pure and fluffy, but I don’t think that’s what’s in play when people leave off an ‘abuse’ tag.


End file.
